New YA Books Hitting Shelves This Week: August 12, 2024

Oluwan is a city of magic. Within the city, Small Sade is looking for a job as a maid, since it’s a field where people are not concerned with her looks. But before she can get a job, she’s accidentally bound to a god called the Crocodile, whose rumored power is eating pretty girls. To keep the god at bay, Small Sade tells him her biggest secret: she’s a Curse Eater, which allows her to change people’s fates by cleaning their homes.

Small Sade isn’t going to let the Crocodile tell her what to do, even if they’re bound. She takes a job as a Curse Eater at a fancy inn and plans to woo the wealthy who are there in order to gain status in Oluwan.

But will her past — and the Crocodile — be her downfall? Or does everyone in Oluwan have her wrong?

It’s time for the senior class trip to Paris. Ruby is trying not to admit how much she likes Sean, while Sean is also crushing hard on Ruby but waiting for her to approach him first.

But that might not happen. Ruby’s best friend invites her and two other classmates to a party in the Parisian catacombs, one that her friend was invited to by a mysterious Parisian boy. The girls never make it to the party, though. Instead, they’re being chased by something sinister in the catacombs.

Will they be able to escape unharmed? That’s the problem: no one knows, and above ground, Sean is trying to find the four girls amid a media frenzy.

Evie’s parents have divorced and moving to Ravenglass, Massachusetts, is what she hopes will help realign her life. Unfortunately, that hope doesn’t last long, as Evie discovers people call her new home the Horror House, as it is where Holly Hobbie disappeared.

But has Holly really vanished? That’s hard to say, as Evie experiences several weird happenings, odd shadows, and eerie situations that lead her to believe that the girl is still there. She’s just taken on a different form.

This is the first in a horror series. Holly Horror #2: The Longest Night hits shelves this week, too, so you can read ’em back to back.

If you love classic stories remixed, look no further than this clever take on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

Last spring, Gabriel and Henry were kicked out of their London Medical School due to a scandal…and the beliefs about the true nature of their relationship. Gabriel is back in London now and is not ready to start over again without Henry. But Henry has become distant, and Gabriel is desperate to find out what happened.

So Gabriel keeps an eye on the Jekyll house, hoping for any signs of Henry. Instead, he meets Hyde, who claims to be close to Henry. But what unravels opens more questions than answers.

Set in the 1880s in London, readers will fall into this strange, dark world.

Sloan and Cherry are inseparable. They’d met only a few days before the start of their summer as camp counselors and have bound close. It makes sense: they were the only two to survive a massacre at the camp, wherein masked men with machetes took out everything they could.

But as new insight comes from the situation, Sloan begins to wonder if Cherry — now her girlfriend — is not the good person she seems to be. Could Cherry have been part of the murder plot?

Yolanda Alvarez is at the top of her game, feeling confident and happy in her Bronx high school. She’s hoping this year she can catch the attention of a boy and be given the tools to be inducted into her family’s bruja traditions.

But it’s a white boy — the new kid at her school — who threatens it all. Yolanda is having visions of this boy threatening and acting on violence in the school. But how can she warn people? She’s not the right color, first, and second, the visions part might not land with anyone who has the power to intervene.

She’ll need to listen to the wisdom of Brujas Diosas, her ancestors and guides. And that indeed might be key to her not only being heard but following through on what she knows she needs to do.